A major cost incurred in the repair of underground gas utility supply lines is for excavation and backfill of the street or roadway beneath which a repair is to be made, such as a required removal or replacement of the connection between a gas service line and a gas main. Large size excavations take longer to create and to refill and, when left open overnight or unattended, any street excavation poses a danger to vehicular traffic and to pedestrians. In order to reduce this cost and to eliminate such dangers, vacuum digging techniques have been developed by which relatively deep excavations having fairly small areas of opening can be made to reach the service line connection to the main for the required repair. However, such reduced size excavations, which are smaller than such as will permit a man to work therein, require specially adapted, long-handled tools for making repairs remotely, while standing at ground level, and special techniques for manipulating such tools, which extend down into the excavation.
Many such specially adapted tools have been made, and are currently in use. For example, gas leaks at the bell joint between conjoining cast iron conduits have been repaired remotely from above grade, using elongated tools for forcing packing into the bell joint. But, to date, no remotely manipulatable tool or technique is available for tightening (or loosening) the standard compression nut connection between the common, vertically disposed riser tee and the gas main nipple, by which each gas service line in the usual gas supply system draws gas from the gas supply main.
Accordingly, it is intended by the present invention to provide a tool and a method for working from a standing position, at ground level, within a very narrow excavation, when connecting or removing a riser tee which is mounted on an underground gas main, which procedure is required whenever an underground gas service line is removed or replaced. The tool should be readily controllable from the above-ground location and, of course, must be effective to permit turning of the attachment nut without undue difficulty.